Tag Archives: Blogging

Curious sorts might be wondering whether I’ve done little but stew about Oklahoma’s crazy weather since last dropping a few words onto this blog…given the laments of my last post and the headline of today’s…

If so, I’m tossing out a bevy of lines to say that the weather has been very much on my mind these days… though in a good way.. and that I’m alive and well… and that by this time tomorrow, I”ll be in Seattle… getting ready to board a cruise ship to sail the coast of Alaska. Who knows? Maybe if I’m can lasso a little discipline, I’ll drop a few posts during our travels. Photos, maybe… if words, other than “wish you were here” evade me.

Stating the obvious, in case few have noticed, I’ve become a fair-weather blogger. Or better to say… a foul-weather blogger — one who’s only willing to write when the forecast for rain is 30 percent or more, when it doesn’t make sense to pull out my paint brush… when finish coats need four hours to rainproof.

That my absence from the blog has more to do with busyness on other fronts, that I’ve been occupied outside… gardening up a storm and happily painting the exterior of my house between rainy spells … stirs up a strange stew of emotions within me. At times I simply rejoice in the work and the result, for both past times are rewarding in a way that writing, for now, is not. But I can’t begin to describe the relief I feel to have this burden of projects almost lifted, since I’ve been pondering the work for two years now.

Juggling these two outside chores has meant not only that I’ve dropped writing, but that I’ve tethered myself to hourly forecasts as if everyday life depended upon them. Of course, in a real way, it has. For I’ve no shame in admitting that slipping my smart phone in and out of my pocket every few hours to see whether the winds of change say it’s best for me to pick up my paint brush… or shovel… or simply head to the showers till another day.. is as natural as breathing… has become (at best) a fidgety tic…. or, at worst, a mild sort of addiction.

Working outside has given me new appreciation for those whose occupations take place everyday in the wild blue yonder. For plans are just that…subject to change; their execution hinging upon good weather or bad. Forget the bedtime forecasts. What matters is the weather one wakes up to… since it doesn’t take a Oklahoma weather god to know that the bedtime forecast is ‘old news’ when there’s a morning forecast.. and that that, too, grows obsolete in the face of the noon forecast at mid-day.

Why weather changes with the beat of time. It is mercurial. One year rainy, the next parched with drought. Temperatures rise and fall in sync with changing mercury levels of old-timer outdoor thermometers. And crazy as it may be to admit it, I love our constantly changing Oklahoma weather. Somehow, in ways I don’t wish to describe, it changes me. And not just my current mood… but something deeper that is tied into faith and hope for all things good.

This year, in a Fat Tuesday post, I gave up all my lovely planting plans. But come May, I saw I was too quick to give in. Because in spite of our wetter-than-normal summer– or maybe because of it… (since I always seems to get more done when I feel as if I have limited windows of opportunities of “making hay”) — it’s good to report that the bones of all my ornamental gardens are now installed. And that my two year old front gardens — taking up space in this post — are “toddling” about, needing very little attention.

Good thing, given all the time it’s taking to get my house painted. It feels goods to know that I leave for vacation with the roof trim finished and glowing. And that I’ll come home to less than a month of painting to the finish line… with just vinyl windows and garage doors to go…. Why by the looks of things, vacationing from the blog has been very good for home and garden… and good for my soul, too, since both offer spaciousness and time to reflect on life and God and what and who I love most in the world.

In between all the work, my husband and I are still making plenty of vacation plans … after Alaska, comes Australia and New Zealand….which seems odd, I suppose… to run away from everyday life when it’s time to step back and savor all that’s been accomplished. But such in life, I suppose. And not just for us, it seems, since our very own weather god, Gary England, at the height of a glorious career, will soon be retiring as chief meteorologist for Channel Nine…our local CBS affiliate.

Gary has always been our “go-to” weather guy, in good weather and bad. It will be hard to imagine everyday life without him. I will miss his calm, reassuring voice and comforting presence in my living room. Especially on stormy nights. Gary is the sort of person that most people feel like they know even when they don’t. Many nice words have already been written about him and his long career here in Oklahoma City. And I expect many more will be aired, in one fashion or another, between now and his final forecast later this month… though it has surprised me to realize it’s not just the local press. A LA Times reporter wrote a nice article right after the May 19th and 20th storms worth reading if you’ve the interest and time. Similarly, the New York Times published a piece a few days ago, which by the sounds of it, had been baking since the storms of May 31st… awaiting for Gary to announce his retirement… for Gary had admitted during the interview that he had been encouraged by station management to keep on being a weather god until it stopped being fun…. and well.. sometime after the May storms, he admitted to the reporter, it had stopped being fun.

When things stop being fun, whatever “things” are, those lucky enough to have choice in the matter move on to the the next fun thing. For Gary, it’s an executive job at the television station. For me, for now, it’s being outside painting with latex formulas and flowers instead of painting with words at my computer. And I don’t regret a single minute of being away — for what a glorious time it has been to be out of doors. Why this is the first time, in a long time, that Oklahoma lawns have been lush and green entering August. Or that I can recall tomatoes still setting fruit this late in the season, and evening temperatures hovering below eighty at night. Today’s morning forecast is mid-eighties and sunny — a change from yesterday’s 50 percent chance for showers.

Some times, during all that planting and painting, I’ve wondered whose summer weather we have had the good fortune to experience. I’ve wondered whether, perhaps, the jet stream made a wrong turn and lost its way… giving us some other fine state’s weather in the process. Because if I didn’t know better, I’d think I was living in Oswego, New York rather than Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. However it happened, whatever its source, wherever our fine summer weather has hailed from, I don’t imagine I’ll soon forget it. Nor Gary England, the T.V. weatherman, either.

Could be that the weather gods are just bestowing Gary with a fine parting gift. Because to do the unexpected…. to deliver what could never be forecasted in a million years by the best weatherman of all… well… that would be just like those ‘ole weather gods… wouldn’t you say?

I’m not sure why I said yes. I’m no good at book clubs and reading groups. But in spite of past failings, and because I fell in love at first sight with the novel’s opening paragraphs, I signed on to read Salman Rushdie’s award-winning Midnight’s Children.

Rushdie birthed this masterpiece while I was in the midst of mastering the pieces of my busy young life — marriage, career and motherhood without apple pie but plenty of midnight feedings to compensate.

Older, if not wiser, I’m still busy. It’s the way I keep time. But not too overextended for this travel piece — this story in a story that I believe, once I’ve arrived to the final word and period, may point to some greater truth that lives just off the page.

Why do I think this? Well, because this story moves. Though not always in chronological order. Like a pendulum, the story grants peeks into the future, speaking of events and characters without proper introductions — then swings back to make sure we’re still hanging on to the story line. In a fictional world where time is elastic — stretching forward, snapping back, keeping readers at attention — it’s good that Rushdie never loses control.

We are safe, following the trail of words left by expert hands, even while “traveling” such strange lines across India, even as we careen through the countdown of time to reach the end of British colonial rule. Strange, as in, where are these sentences leading me? And where will they take the three generations of family the author introduces in Book One, whose lives intersect with the wilds of three great world religions?

Hinduism, Islam and Christianity are all present and accounted for — while the story’s patriarchal grandfather, poor soul, loses his faith in God before we’re barely out of the gate. It happens — on page two of the story — in such a humiliating, unforgettable way: Nose first, Aadam Aziz dives to prayer mat and, rather than encountering God, crashes into the earth. Three drops of blood fall. A hole in his soul opens up. And his faith in God leaks out so fast he becomes “caught in a strange middle ground, trapped between belief and disbelief…” Readers are left with a holey hero, who lives a young life into an old one, stuffing his hole to the brim with marriage and career and children.

Hmmm.

I’m thankful to the wise organizers of this reading experience who built in plenty of time for spacious reading. The schedule has not only granted breathing room for life but allowed me to fly back to the beginning to re-read Book One with “traveled eyes.” Once was simply not enough for me, since I missed too much, even traveling slow. I was getting the gist of the story but leaving too many fine details and scenery behind.

I don’t want to miss anything along the way, if I can help it. Every word, every image, every potential connection that bridges one idea to another feels important. Of course, I am missing details. How can I not? There is just too much to take in. And the author knows it. He has written a novel made to read over and over again; he implies as much when he writes, toward the end of Book One,

“To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world. I told you that.”

Since I’m just a “tourist” traveling in a foreign land and time, I cannot hope to swallow Rushdie’s world. But like any tourist, I hope to carry away sweet memories of my visit. And, since I do not armchair-travel alone, I look forward to enlarging my perspective by reading other reactions to Rushdie’s story at today’s first of four meeting stops.

Perhaps it’s coincidence. Or nothing but tunnel vision that causes me to filter out what is not uppermost in my mind; when I have “X” on the brain I see “X.” And I see ‘X” everywhere. Sometimes to the exclusion of all else. No “Y.” No “Z.” No whatever else — as it flies past my line of vision.

But whether coincidence or tunnel vision, over and over I find myself thinking along a certain path — to encounter another on my blog roll further down that particular thinking trail. The connection feels important — not hokey, as with those sometimes, seemingly ‘spot-on’ sayings rising out of broken fortune cookies, that get read aloud by tables full of wisdom seekers.

Here’s one for instance — that comes out of a blog comment I wrote several days ago:

How strange to find you baptizing today’s post with the phrase “question without an answer” — on the day I should wake up realizing that unanswered questions are one of the many things to inspire me. Maybe it’s Rilke’s urging – “Live the questions now.” — to that young poet of old that causes me to find life most meaningful and real in the face of unanswered questions… [Questions like:]

Is my youngest daughter’s growth on her thyroid benign..? What comes after death? [in thinking about my mother-in-law…] What’s for supper?

No matter their weight, the questions themselves inspire me to live. Inch by inch. Day by day. Until I catch the glimmer of an answer…

Upon writing that list, I thought it an odd mix of questions — the first two hovering at the quick of life with the last feeling a bit frivolous and flighty. But rather than play editor, I decided to leave the questions be, keeping the list just as it came to me.

It was just as well. By the next day, I began seeing the questions as more connected than I’d first imagined. And it came about as all reinterpretations of the past happen — by looking at the same “X” through a different set of lens. In this case, it was more than one pair of lenses — for I looked at that list through the lens of a new event; and then the lens of a new experience, and finally, through the lens of one other than myself.

That the last came from a flock of birds who had just dropped in for supper — lending me their proverbial bird’s-eye view — well, this did throw me off-balance — enough to confess that even now, I can’t say whether these birds were Red-breasted Black Birds or Robins. All I know is they were ravenous and noisy and feasting on the fruit of the Cherry Laurel outside my kitchen window. It seemed every seat in my new bird cafe was filled. As fast as a ‘table’ came open, a new bird came to takes its place. No need to ask, “What’s for supper? These birds had the good fortune to find my tree, so supper became ripe black cherries.

Of course, whatever food they happened upon that day — fitting their own particular bird’s palate — could have become a fine supper: worms, birdseed or insects, perhaps. From the bird’s perspective, any answer would have been a good answer — a life-giving answer — as long as the birds themselves didn’t become another creature’s supper — like some bird-watching fat cat, per chance.

As I watched them eat, I saw that life for these birds, as it is for any creature living in the wilderness, is a meal-by-meal affair. It’s not a question of bird seed or worms. It’s birdseed. Or worms. Or fruit. Whatever they find. These live an eat or be eaten sort of existence. Everyday. From the birds perspective, living into the answer of ‘what’s for supper’ is not a light-weight question at all — why it very much belonged to that quick of life list of questions left in my blog comment.

Still, the strange thing about yesterday, one I still need to think about, is this: As I watched that bird-laden tree being picked over clean, I remember thinking how I’d never seen that tree look so alive before. It shook. And pulsed. As birds came and went. And while ravished by the wilderness, the tree lived on. Empty of fruit, the tree lives to bear again. The tree lives and the birds live. And I like how both the giver and the takers have happy endings.

And though I can’t say how — somehow, when I looked at that tree eaten yet not consumed, I imagined the tree being me. And that instead of birds feasting on my fruit, it became unanswered questions which pecked away my fruitfulness. Yes, it’s crazy, crazy, these thoughts of mine. But then, I’ve always had a wild imagination. Perhaps these loose connections I’m making are nothing but tunnel vision at play. Yes. Let’s just say that me being that tree — and my flock of questions being those birds — is nothing more than one of those odd life coincidences.